BasicGuide
The Basics of Roma Victor
I. Life functions
a. Eating and Drinking
i. Food
ii. Drinkb. Wounds and Healing
c. Sleeping
II. Environment
a. Time
b. Finding food
c. Basic supplies
d. Direction
e. Resources
III. Community
a. Talking
b. Guilds
c. Moneyi. Merchants
ii. Errands
iii. Workingd. Master/Elder system
IV. Combat
a. Attending
b. How to fight
c. Training
d. Death
V. Tutorial
Welcome to Roma Victor. This game simulates life in the Roman Empire, circa 180 AD. Life will be more realistic than most games you are used to, with more hard work and more need to cover the basic necessities. Your character will have to eat regularly, be clothed and shod, and will have to work for a living.
At the same time, this experience should prove to be more immersive and complex than any other game, striving to re-create an environment that was last seen almost 2,000 years ago. The environment is closely modeled on the actual world at that time. The first thing to take from that is that the world is BIG. Do not expect to move about from place to place quickly. Most players will probably never completely explore the world of RV, just as most Romans never left their province. The second thing to take from this is that, while the developers strive to make game play fun, there will not necessarily be complete balance. The location of resources, the presence of NPCs, the cost of merchants, and many other things are not artificially and arbitrarily evened out. Characters will have advantages and disadvantages from the start based on their location and culture.
This guide is meant for people who are first starting out in Roma Victor. Though released, the game is constantly being improved and updated, so this will be a living, changing document.
The best way to use this document is as a reference and a guide. A quick tutorial is at the end. Please use the outline at the top as a way to navigate to a desired section.
For ease of writing, I will use the pronoun “you” to refer to your in-game character or avatar, as well as you the real-life player behind the keyboard.
Life functions
You are a unique individual in RV, but you are also a regular human being. From the start, it will seem like you are being bombarded with urgent messages about your well-being. This can get somewhat stressful until you are used to taking care of the basic needs. Just relax, and don’t take the messages too seriously. While there are effects from hunger, thirst, and wounds, they are not drastic unless ignored for a while.
Eating and Drinking
Every day you need to eat and drink. Exerting yourself will require more water than food. You can check your status by typing "\status". By default, the F8 key is bound to this command. You will see a message that says if you are hungry, thirsty, and/or cold. It might also say you are fine. You don’t have to check this all the time; you will get warning messages when your belly is growling or your throat is parched.
To drink water, you must have an amphora in your inventory, holding a sufficient amount of water. To eat, you must have the food item in your inventory. Clicking on either one of these items will bring up the properties dialog, and there will be a red tag that says “Drink” or “Eat”. If you do not see that tag, then you have been sated and don’t need any more. For an amphora, it could also mean it is empty. Check your status to be sure.
Food
There are five types of food implemented right now: apples, pears, plums, fish, and bread. Apples are gathered by anyone in a forest. Fish is created by spearing fish in a body of water and cooking them on a stove. Bread is created by planting barley, harvesting it, winnowing it and milling it to create dough, and cooking it in an oven. As of right now, there is no difference in what food you eat, nor in the quality of the food items. So right now, go with apples, because it takes a long time to fish, and it is expensive and a real pain to make bread.
To gather apples, pears, plums go to a forested area (you will see trees, a texture of leaves and sticks on the ground, and a crunching noise of footfalls on leaves and twigs from your speakers). Use the “/forage” command (bound to F5 key by default) and you will slowly gather apples and sticks. Discard the sticks if you don’t need them. Foraging uses the ‘Foraging’ and 'Basic' skills and the ‘Sense’ statistic. At first, it will take a long time, but when those skills start getting bumped up, it will go faster. If at all possible, ask a veteran player to train you up a few levels in ‘Foraging’, it will make a world of difference.
Drink
There is only one type of drink implemented right now, and that is good old water. River water, to be exact. There is fresh water and salt water, but salt water is only used for baking and leather tanning. There is no quality for water, and no diseases.
You can drink water in your hands by going to the edge of a river and typing "\drink". To carry water you must have an amphora, an ancient type of jug or canteen, in your inventory. Buy one from an ‘amphora_b merchant’, or get one from a veteran. You will also receive one from your master if you go through the tutorial. They are cheap and easy to make. They don’t decay, so their quality doesn’t matter. Once you have an amphora, go to a river. Walk out towards the middle. You will know the middle of the river when you see the bottom change from grass to dirt and shells. You will also hear a splashing sound. If the blue blur from walking underwater is too much, turn off the UI with the Scroll Lock key so you can get your bearings. If you don’t have a good graphics card, wait to hear the splashes, keep going until you are in the flat bottom, or just keep trying to fill your jug. When you are in the middle, click on your amphora, and then press the “Refill” key to top it off. That’s it.
You can also refill an amphora from some of the underground tanks. These are in work areas, so please don’t use these just to get drinking water. If you must, click on the underground tank, select the “Attach” tab, and then click your amphora and then the “Refill” tab. Chances are you will get a message “It is not clear what you are trying to refill your amphora from”. This is buggy, so keep moving your character a step or two around and try again. Eventually it will fill. I have found the best bet is to stand on top of the tank.
In the future, you will not be able to walk underwater, so this will change somewhat.
Wounds and Healing
Inevitably, you will get hurt. It’s a rough world. For a beginner, the most likely injury will be to your feet. After running around outside for long enough, you will get a message that “your feet hurt”, and then another that “your wounds are inhibiting your skill progress”. Don’t worry, the wounds are minor and the inhibition small. Look at your attributes, you will see that the Agility bar is slightly knocked down. If you are well fed and watered, just resting for a bit (standing in one place) will allow the wounds to heal.
This sort of wound to your feet can be avoided by wearing shoes. If you do the tutorial, your master will give you a cheap set of shoes.
Wounds work like this, both in and out of combat: a part of your body sustains an injury, and the associated attribute bar will lose a bit. The white hash mark is the maximum that attribute can go up to. As the bright red bar recedes, it reveals a dark red bar underneath it. The more of the dark red bar showing, the more wounds you have, the more it affects your ability to move and fight, the more it inhibits your skill progress, and the longer it takes to heal. When the bright red bar is gone, you are knocked unconscious. You will fall to the ground, and while down there, you are open to a Deathblow, which kills you. After a few seconds, you will get up, but that bar is still zeroed out. It will slowly recover if you get no further wounds, and you are fully fed and watered.
Wounds to your head will affect the Vision and Intuition bars. Wounds to the arms affect the Strength and Dexterity bars. Wounds to your torso affect the Stamina bar. And wounds to your legs affect the Agility bar.
Vision is connected to your Aim statistic. Intuition affects how high your Sense statistic is at first, and how quickly it rises. Strength is connected to the Muscle statistic, and should affect how much damage you do when hitting an opponent. In the future, it should also determine how much you can carry. Dexterity is linked to the Quickness statistic. Stamina affects how fast your Vigor bar regenerates, and also how much actions such as swinging a sword or running cost in Vigor. Agility effects how well you can dodge incoming blows, and is tied to the Craftsmanship statistic.
Healing, ranges from using a drink of water to help an incapactitated person to their feet to using rags in order to bind badly bleeding wounds. At low skill levels, these healing attempts will rarely succeed. To heal a wounded person, wait until they are incapacitated and fall to the ground. Select them, aiming somewhere down near their feet. You will see an "Aid" tab. Click that and you will automatically take whatever action is necessary. If they have merely been knocked senseless, you will give them water (if you have any) and help them stand. If they are bleeding, you will try to bind the wound. If you have a rag in your inventory, it will be used up in the attempt, whether successful or not. Without a rag, the chances of binding are very low. When clicking the Aid tab, be very careful, it is right next to the Deathblow tab!
If there is no medic handy, then only time can heal wounds, though it is fairly rapid compared to real life. Make sure you have food and water on hand. If you are hungry or thirsty, healing stops. Also, healing does not take place when you are logged out from RV.
Sleeping
At this time, sleeping is not required in RV. When you log out, you cease to exist in the world of RV. It has been mentioned that in the future there will be ‘sleeping’, as in its important where you log out. You will have a reputation among your people, and it will go down if you regularly sleep (log out) outdoors. When you log outside, you stay in the world for a minute and are vulnerable.
Environment
The world of RV strives to be realistic for its time period. However, it is still a game, so the land is going to be simplified, with less of the things we take for granted like trees and plants and rocks and dirt. This will make resource spots even more valuable. It will also make it harder to navigate. And the environment will not be totally interactive. But when weather and seasons are implemented they will make a big difference.
As has been said, the map is on a 1:1 scale, so it is huge. Do not expect to jet about quickly. Build up the community you are in, because chances are you will not be leaving too often. The game world will be split into a number of ‘boards’, each somewhat analogous to a Roman Imperial province. Each board will have a large amount of squares, each roughly 1 kilometer on a side. These match up with one or more ‘bubbles’, which is a sub-division used by the server computers to track players and items. You will notice when you move from square (or bubble) to square that you get a message, saying “You are entering xxx” (if that square has a name), and whether it is contested or under Roman provincial law. If it is contested, it is a free-fire zone as far as PvP goes. If it’s under law, it is still PvP-able, but there will be consequences from the guards.
Currently, the game is played on one board, Southern Caledonia, which was in the area where England and Scotland come together now, and where Hadrian’s Wall could be found. It measures about 60 km by 30 km. There is a Roman town in the southeast, called Corstopitum, an iron mine in the middle western edge, and a barbarian settlement in the northwest corner. Between the Romans and the barbarians is Hadrian’s Wall, with a large fort halfway between the village and the mines on the western edge of the board. Other towns and cities have yet to be reported.
There is a road running from Corstopitum to the mines and thence to the fort. Only newer video cards will display the road, so if you can’t see it, ask a veteran player for help.
Time
Time in RV is compressed, about 3:1. For every one second in real life, 3 seconds go by in RV. So if you are adding firewood to a pile, for example, and see that it will take “1 minuta to fully add this component”, it will actually take 20 seconds in real life.
Time also affects the amount of light and the appearance of the sky. There is Morning, Afternoon, and Evening. During the early morning and late afternoon, and the whole evening, it will be too dark to see. You can cheat by upping the Gamma setting on your video card to ‘see in the dark’, or you can endure the Stygian blackness. You can move and fight in the dark just fine, but you cannot build projects or take errands from NPCs when it is night. The sky will also change depending on the time of day. Get to know the sky, it makes it a little easier to navigate. For instance, during the middle of the day, the large black cloud is just north of west.
Finding food
Farming is beyond the scope of this introductory guide, so don’t worry about that. It’s advanced. The easiest thing to do is forage for apples. Go to a wooded area, and hold down the F5 key (tied to "\forage" by default). Hold it down until your Vigor bar is empty, and you get messages that you must rest. Wait until the Vigor bar is full, and then go at it again. Keep the apples, discard the sticks. If you can get someone to teach you at least up to level 2 in Forage, it will make things go a lot faster. Getting that bump from 1 to 2, especially when you are hungry, is very frustrating.
Apple foraging uses the “foraging” skill and the Sense statistic.
Fishing only requires a spear. Walk out to the middle of a river, and then equip your spear. Click on the spear, and click the Fish tab. You will be told whether or not you caught a fish. At low skill levels, you will probably not get a fish. BE VERY CAREFUL, as each throw damages your spear. Check on the quality all the time. When it gets down to around 10, stop fishing and go repair the spear at a grindstone (attach to grindstone, unequip spear, select spear, click Repair tab). Once the quality goes down to 1, the spear is irrevocably broken, and they are expensive.
Once you have a fish, take it to a Stove. You must have a unit of firewood in your inventory. Firewood can be gathered in a forest just like apples, using the "\gather" command (by default, bound to the F6 key). Attach to the stove, then click the fish. Choose the “craft meat-fish” tab. That will remove the fish and the firewood from your inventory. Come back in 10 minutes (real-life), and click the stove again. Choose the “remove meat-fish” tab. Now you can eat your cooked fish.
If you click on a device like the stove and do not see a tab that says “Attach” or a tab that says “remove xxx”, then it is in use and cannot be disturbed. Or it is Private; check in the properties dialog when you click it to see if it is set to Public or Private. Devices can only have one user at a time.
Fishing uses the “fishing” skill, the “fishing-freshwater” skill, and the Sense statistic.
Basic supplies
At an early date, you need to decide what kind of person you will be. A crafter? A farmer? A warrior? A jack-of-all-trades? This should take place when the character is created, but there is not a lot of choice. This will also affect what kind of stuff you need to carry around with you.
You start off with a hammer, a hatchet, and a knife. If you look at the quality, you can see these are all terrible, as they start at 5 to 10, on a 1-99 scale. They will quickly break. The hammer is used in crafting, the hatchet is used for collecting wood, and the knife is used in crafting and farming.
A lot of people like to carry six apples and a full amphora before they log out, so they can eat and drink the next time the play without worrying about getting spammed with messages while slowly gathering breakfast.
For a crafter, you can be a potter, or a carpenter, or a blacksmith, or a tailor. Potters need some jugs of water and some good knives, they decay quickly. Carpenters need knives, saws and hammers. You can generally carry just one of each, unless you don’t feel like stopping in the middle of a heavy crafting session and repairing. If you use hammers, carry two, as it takes a hammer to repair a hammer. Blacksmiths needs hammers and tongs, as well as moulds for their blank iron tools. Tailors need knives, scissors and spindles.
Resource gatherers can collect wood or iron. For wood, you need a handsaw and a hatchet. They decay very fast. Miners need a pick and a hammer (to repair the pick, along with twine).
Farmers need a lot of tools. Flax requires a knife and a mortar. Barley requires a sickle, a winnowing fork, a sifting pan, a knife, and a mortar. Also, if you are tending your crops (not always desirable, as the current fertility system is buggy), you will probably want to have more than one amphora.
Warriors need a weapon and a shield. The current weapons available are the spear and the pilum (both staff weapons), and the long and short sword. For shields, a this time only small bucklers are craftable, both wood and iron. Armour is not cheap, but helmets and body armour can be vital in combat. A warrior will also want to carry plenty of water and food.
Direction
One of the most daunting things for a new player is finding their way around. Every game played to date has had a way in the interface for the player to easily know where they are going. Not so in RV. There is no compass, no heading, no waypoints (well, there are a couple, but they just tell you the cardinal direction, not show you, and are more advanced than this guide). There are also no in-game maps. Just accept the fact that you will be completely lost, geographically, when you first start out. However, it is not hopeless. Ask veteran players to point you in the right direction, or better yet run with you if it’s nearby. Run the route a few times, and pay close attention to any landmarks. And learn to read the sky and the silhouettes of the mountains. Finally, improve your “sense-of-direction” skill.
“Sense-of-direction” is a skill that will tell you what direction you are currently facing. It is the most misunderstood skill in RV among new players. It models or own real life sense…and none of us can infallibly point out a direction without outside hints. At no point will the skill be 100% accurate. Only when the skill is around 99 can it be totally relied on. And even then, I suggest the polling approach, where you query it 10 times and take the most common result. At lower levels, it is fairly useless, even with lots of checks.
Get a veteran to train you up as high as they can in this skill (called SOD for short). Most vets will have it at 99, so they can train you up to skill level 17 (skills can be trained to a max of 1:6, 1 point trained for every 6 points they have). After that keep the F7 button (the default keybind for the "\sense-of-direction" command) held down at all times. This will gradually increase your SOD skill, and as an added bonus, will increase your Sense attribute and Basic skill, which will make foraging and fishing a little easier.
Learn the shapes of the mountain ranges. They are far away and pretty static. If you know that to get from Point A to Point B in a straight line means that you head towards a certain ‘V’ in the mountains, you will always be able to get from A to B and from B to A no matter what time of day it is or what your SOD is at.
Resources
Like any good MMO, RV requires lots of raw materials to be collected and turned into tools and weapons. Currently, you can collect the following resources: Firewood, sticks, branches, logs, charcoal, clay, mud, sand, rock, iron, apples, and fish. You may need these resources for yourself, or you may be able to do it for someone else as a favor or for pay.
Firewood is gathered in a forest, using the "\gather" command (by default the F6 key). It requires no tools. You can build a firewood pile.
Sticks can be foraged in the forest, along with apples, or cut from a felled tree*, or from a pile of logs. You need a stick to add to a firewood pile, but you cannot build a pile of sticks.
Branches are cut from a felled tree*, or a pile of logs. You cannot create a pile of branches.
Logs are cut from a felled tree.* You can create a pile of logs.
- (Felling a tree requires a handsaw. Cutting pieces from it requires a hatchet.)
Charcoal is not gathered but made. It is a pile of firewood, with mud and water added.
Clay is gathered from a clay pit. These are special items, and may change. Clay can be turned into a pile.
Mud is gathered from a grassy area using the "\gather" command (F6 key). You cannot create a pile of mud.
Sand is gathered from a road area using the "\gather" command (F6 key). You cannot create a pile of sand.
Rocks are foraged from a grassy area using the "\gather" command (F6 key). You cannot create a pile of rocks. They are also found when creating construction sites.
Iron comes from a mine. Currently there is only one mine. It must be attached to while a pick is equipped. You can create a pile of iron ore. The ore comes in rough rocks that must be smelted in a furnace. The furnace reduces the rock to an iron bloom, called a lump in RV. The lump goes into a forge to become a tool or weapon.
Apples are gathered in a forest. You cannot create a pile of apples.
Fish are hunted in a stream with a spear. You cannot create a pile of fish.
There is also dung and gravel in the game, but currently they can only be gotten from a merchant.
Creating these piles is time-consuming and boring, and you can only do one at a time, so be careful where you locate one so that it is close to other stuff you need. Ask a veteran player for help, or consult the wiki for the requirements of a specific pile.
Community
In an MMO, the community is the key. This is not an easy game to solo, and probably wouldn't be much fun to try. Extensive interactions with fellow Romans and freemen is pretty much required.
Talking
Talking is of course done through the chat window. But what may not be readily apparent is that talk is ranged to simulate the human voice. By default, you are “talking”, which has a range of about 50 yards. You can whisper, shout, and yell. Whisper has a range of a few feet. Shouting has a range of about 100 yards, but is limited to about a dozen words and takes some amount of your Vigor bar. Yelling is limited to four letters, and has a range of about 200 yards, with a big Vigor hit.
To use these different speech modes, precede your text with the commands /whisper, /shout, or /yell.
If no one responds to your questions, they probably can’t hear you. Try speaking up, or moving closer. If there is still no response when you are right in front of them, they are either AFK or just ignoring you!
Guilds
The size and complexity of Roma Victor is probably going to make this a very guild-heavy game. It will be difficult to solo. Rather, you should try to find a good group with active members that play around the same time as you do, and fit into a niche, providing services to others and getting the same from them.
Guilds are too advanced for this guide to explain. But you can find plenty of these groups by asking around. All are recruiting since populations are so low right now.
A guild will help you with early food gathering, learning skills, and accomplishing any beginner tasks the game gives you. They can set you up as a warrior or a crafter.
Money
Money comes in sesterces, one of the denominations in use in the Roman Empire. The equivalent of a dollar, or a pound, or a euro. The abbreviation is just ses.
You the real life person can give you the character sesterces by contributing money to the program makers using their VERM system. For every euro (or equivalent you give), you will get a certain amount of sesterces. See the forums for more information on the VERM.
If you do not want to make money as if it is manna from heaven, then you will either have to sell goods to merchants, earn it by running errands, or working for other players, in a guild or out. The only things you will need money for is transactions with merchants or other players; there are no official taxes in RV.
Merchants
Merchants are NPCs, known by what they sell. You will see their name listed as “amphora_b merchant” or “seeds_flax merchant”. Go to a merchant, and select them (click the spacebar while they are under your crosshairs). They will ask if you want to buy anything, and about a dozen items will appear on the floor. If you want to buy, select one of the items on the floor, inspect its quality, and look at the price quoted to you in the chat box. To buy it, click the “Buy” tab on the properties dialog. The money is deducted and it appears in your inventory.
The merchant has a seemingly endless supply of goods, but they are of differing quality. Usually the ones on his right side (your left unless you are talking to his back) are more expensive. After buying the high quality items, if there are low quality items left, those have to be bought before his stock resets itself and you can buy high quality items again. It’s a little buggy, and may change.
To sell an item, after selecting the merchant and seeing his wares, click on an item in your inventory. He will quote a price in the chat box. If you agree, click the “Sell” tab on the properties dialog. It disappears immediately and you get the money.
In addition, you can select the merchant again, and some of them will be able to teach you a skill. They can teach you up to level 4. It costs a little money, and you can get these skills from veteran players for free.
Merchants will vary prices slowly, based on supply and demand. They will also buy so-and-so many items before they are full, and they will tell you they aren’t interested.
Errands
Merchants are also good for errands, as are NPC soldiers guarding the streets. After selecting an NPC, type the word “errand” in your chat box. They will give you a scroll, and ask you to take it to some other NPC. Go to that other NPC, select them, and then click the scroll in your inventory. You will see a tab “Present” on the properties dialog if this is the correct NPC. Present it to them, and they will probably pay you a few sesterces. Occasionally, they will ask you to take it back to the original errand-giver, or give you a small item.
The longer the trip between NPCs, and the more expensive the item they deal in, the better the rewards will be. I have seen as little as 1 ses and as much as 31 ses, for only a few minutes work.
Only one errand can be done at a time, and the errands are only given out during daylight hours.
Working
You can work for a guild or another player. This is of course between players and doesn’t involve the game at all, except for the actual payment. Click on a player and select the “Trade” tab on the properties dialog. A window will open that looks like the normal trade interface in every game. There are two halves, and each has a section for items and an amount of cash. Once both of you check the Accept box, the deal is done.
Typical work might involve building piles of resources of a certain quality, running to the mines to get ore, or tending fields.
Master/Elder system
New players begin in "Attending" status. They cannot attack or be attacked. They also cannot set resource piles to private or vote in elections. The Attending status can be removed by completing tasks for a Master (Roman) or an Elder (Freemen). It can also be removed by the LLM (Lord, Lady, or Magistrate - basically, the ruler) of the new player's board. Finally, in the near future Attending will be set to expire after a few weeks.
Romans start as slaves, in Attending status. After Attending is removed, they are just slaves. In time, due to criteria beyond the scop of this guide, they can become citizens. Freemen start as Attending freemen, and then just freemen.
Combat
This is the Roman Empire. The name of the game, as it were, is fighting. This is a simple art to learn, and a difficult one to master. Those who live by the sword will likely die by it, very often and early.
Attending
When you start the game, there is a status called “Attending” set on you. While attending, you cannot attack or be attacked by another person. To do so, attending must be switched off. To do that, right now, requires completing the all of the tasks given by your master or elder that will allow you to be free. Once the tasks are complete, attending is automatically removed and you are vulnerable.
How to fight
As in the second century, combat is quick and dirty. Once attending is turned off, you can attack nearly any other person, be they player or NPC. To attack, hold your crosshairs over the body part you wish to attack, and click the right mouse button. Whatever is in your right hand will be used as a weapon, or your bare fist. If it is a tool, it will decay quickly and break. So will a weapon, but much more slowly, and it will deal more damage.
At this time, off-hand attacks (left mouse click) are not implemented.
There are attack variations, which require moving while striking. If you simply click, it is a “thrust”. If you move forward and strike, it is a “charge”. If you move back and strike, it is a “slash”. Those attacks should cause a little more damage but have a little less chance of hitting. It may also be that different weapons will give more favorable odds on hitting and dealing damage by using different attacks. For instance, the short Roman sword, the gladius, was more of a stabbing sword for very close combat, while the very large Celtic swords were made for big, swinging slashes. What is clear is that these attack variations take more Vigor than regular thrusting.
For every attack, you will spend Vigor points, so you cannot endlessly spam attacks. Whether you hit the target or not will depend on a comparison between your “combat” skill, your weapon skill, probably your Vision and Intuition attributes, and the defensive stats of your target. Damage will probably vary by your Strength and skill. Finally, there is a randomizing factor.
When your blow hits, you will see a message, hear a sound, and hopefully see your target go down in a heap. You can fight multiple targets, there is no “locking on” to a target. Also, the facing of a target will matter, though it is not fully implemented at this time. That is, if you attack from behind (you coward), you have a better chance of hitting.
On defense, there are several layers of protection your attacker must go through. The first is your Dodge. There is a chance you move aside. This skill is based on your Agility as well as your “dodge” skill. The second layer is you Parry. This will use your weapon to block an incoming blow. There is a “parry” skill. Finally, you try to Block the attack. This uses whatever is in your left hand, or your left arm itself. Preferably, you will have a shield, as this damages your arm. If all three layers are penetrated, you will be hit, and take a chunk out of your stats in wounds. The normal person can only take a couple weapon hits to an area, from one to four or five before being incapacitated.
Dodging is something you do automatically, and it doesn’t require a skill. You can turn it off with the F4 key, which is bound by default to the "\dodge" toggle command. Parry is something that only happens if you are attacked from the front or the right, and will not happen if you have no weapon in your hand. Block is something that will happen if you are attacked from the front or the left, and will occur no matter if your left hand is holding anything.
Any hits, whether on offense or defense, will lower the quality of a weapon or shield, so keep an eye on them. Repair weapons when they are low. They are very expensive, and you don’t want to break them. Shields can’t be repaired.
Each hit will cause wounds. You will see the bright red bars dropping, leaving a dark red bar underneath. See the wounds section for more details.
When a character is incapacitated, they are on the ground. They cannot be hit, but they can be killed. Click on the target with the spacebar, somewhere around their feet, and you will see the properties dialog pop up. There will be a tab for “Deathblow”. This will kill them, and send them to Elysium, where they will be reincarnated.
As you fight, your Vigor will drop when you take a swing or are hit. It will regenerate slower when your Stamina drops due to wounds. If your Vigor drops to zero and you are hit, you will be incapacitated just as if one of your stat bars was at zero.
When you are hit, especially from behind, you will see the blue Adrenaline bar shoot up. This simulates a fight-or-flight response. Attacking while this bar is high seems to give a little bonus to hit and damage, though I am not sure if it is fully implemented yet.
The basics of fighting are to have high skills on defense, keep your Vigor up, and be sure to attack when your Adrenaline is high. Don’t spam quick attacks, but be a little moderate. Move around a lot. And accept the fact that no matter how good you are, you may get one or two lucky hits on you that send you to the Afterlife.
Training
Currently, training involves players beating on each other with their weapons in a combat area like an arena or out in the fields. One person attacks while the other stands still and takes it. The attacker will see small increases to their “combat” and weapon skills. The defender will see increases to their “dodge” skill, their “parry” if they have a weapon equipped, and their “block” skill. The attacker aims at individual body parts and keeps attacking, until the hits cause enough wounds for that stat to be completely dark and the defender falls down. Then they move to the next body part. One system is to attack head first, then arms, and then legs. The torso is always off limits in training, since damage there greatly impairs the ability to regenerate Vigor. When they are all used up, the roles reverse.
A training fighter should have a cheap weapon in hand, but still watch that decay. Once the pair has exhausted themselves, they must wait a while to heal, or take on a new defender.
Death
Death comes to all eventually. When you die, your spirit travels to Elysium, the afterlife. At this time, your body and all your goods disappear, but that won’t always be so. Elysium is currently like a great open plain with a dark sky. Turn to face uphill, and then run. Make sure it is straight uphill. After about 5 minutes, you will see a distant figure. It is a man, and when you talk to him he will regenerate you in your assigned spawn point, either in the freemen village or the Roman town, with all your inventory.
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